Video games have been widely distributed for a long time. Users play video games on a certain device (platform). Various platforms have been developed for video games including home game consoles/machines for domestic use, general-purpose personal computers, portable game consoles/machines, mobile phones, Smartphones, and arcade games installed in amusement facilities such as amusement arcades.
Although these consoles, devices, and machines all fall within the definition of the “game machine” as used in the invention of the present application, typical game machines in the present application are game consoles for domestic use.
Examples of home game machines for domestic use include PlayStation 4 (trademark) manufactured and sold by Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. or Xbox One (trademark) manufactured and sold by Microsoft Japan Co., Ltd. For these game machines, a dedicated official controller is often bundled or sold as a separate product and users usually play games using an official controller. Although designs for official controllers have widely varied in the past, a dominant design has begun to emerge. This dominant design has a main body of a laterally elongated shape which users can hold with both hands. The left side half of the main body is equipped with a four-button directional pad that accepts, for example, digital inputs and a stick input device for inputs such as analog inputs that depend on the displacement direction of the stick. The right side half is equipped with four push buttons and another stick input device that is similar to the one just mentioned.
Most controllers for game machines are designed so that they are held and manipulated using both hands.
Nevertheless, for certain kinds of games, users may wish to manipulate a controller using only one hand. Such controllers for game machines of the type held and manipulated using one hand for that purpose have been proposed.